* * *

A second later, however, the footsteps faded away, depriving him of his chance of glory and reminding him that great lovers—whether practicing or aspiring—were not born to be eleventh-hour heroes. He allowed himself a deep breath and rested his hands on his chest. His clothes stuck to him like a second skin. Fumero and his henchmen were walking away. Fermín imagined their figures engulfed by the shadows of the hold and smiled with relief. Perhaps there hadn’t been a tip-off. Maybe this was nothing but a routine control.

Just then the footsteps stopped. A deathly silence followed, and for a few moments all Fermín could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat. Then, like an almost imperceptible sigh, came the minuscule tapping of something tiny and light walking over the lid of the box, just above his face. He recognized the faint odor, somewhere between sweet and sour. His traveling companion, the little mouse, was sniffing at the chinks in the boards, probably detecting the smell of his friend. Fermín was about to hiss lightly and chase it away when a deafening roar filled the hold.

The high-caliber bullet blew the rodent to bits instantly and bored a clean entry hole on the lid of the box about five centimeters from Fermín’s face. Blood dripped through the cracks and fell on his lips. Fermín then felt a tickling sensation on his right leg. As he lowered his eyes to look, he realized that the missile’s path had almost brushed his leg, burning a tear in his trousers before drilling a second exit hole in the wood. A line of hazy light cut through the darkness of his hideaway, following the bullet’s trajectory. He heard the footsteps approaching again and stopping next to the rifle box. Fumero knelt down beside it. Fermín caught the gleam of his eyes in the thin gap between the lid and the box.

“As usual, making friends among the plebs, eh? You should have heard the screams of your friend Amancio when he told us where we’d find you. A couple of wires on the balls, and you heroes sing like goldfinches.”

Facing that look and everything he knew about it, Fermín felt that if he hadn’t sweated out what little courage he had left, trapped in that coffin full of guns, he would have wet himself with panic.

“You smell worse than your friend the rat,” whispered Fumero. “I think you need a bath.”

He could hear the erratic footsteps and the turmoil of the men as they moved boxes and knocked down objects in the hold. While this was taking place, Fumero did not move from where he was. His eyes sounded the darkness inside the box like a serpent at the entrance to a nest, patiently. Before long, Fermín felt a powerful hammering on the box. At first he thought they were trying to break it up. But when he saw the tips of nails appearing under the lid, he understood that what they were doing was sealing down the rim. In a second the millimeter-wide opening that had previously been visible all around the lid vanished. He’d been buried in his own hiding place.